2015 Global Responsibility Report
Empowering and developing workers

We believe all workers, no matter where they live, have the right to a safe working environment and the opportunity to grow. As part of our commitment to sourcing responsibly, we continue to address important social issues by empowering the people who produce the products we sell. We do so by:

  • Offering capacity-building/training opportunities
  • Championing worker safety and well-being
Capacity building

Women in Factories training
In 2011, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation launched Women in Factories as a five-year training program. We work with NGOs in Bangladesh, China, El Salvador, Honduras and India toward the goal of providing life and work skills training to at least 60,000 women in the supply chain. Of those, 8,000 high-potential women are offered advanced training, with a focus on management and leadership skills, as well as in-depth instruction on work and life skills. For additional information and a progress update on this initiative, see the Training portion of Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Opportunity section of this report.

Supplier Round Table
The Supplier Round Table is a forum for our suppliers, factories and stakeholders from similar sourcing regions to come together and discuss concerns and share best practices. The sessions are focused on responsible sourcing goals, as well as objectives and current challenges across their region. For a progress update, see the Responsible Sourcing portion of the Sustainability section in this report.

Worker safety and well-being

Addressing human trafficking
Human trafficking remains a challenge in global supply chains both in developed and developing economies. This problem demands not only short-term action to address sector-specific issues, but also a long-term collective commitment from industry stakeholders and governments. To make progress on this critical issue, we support initiatives like Stronger Together and Project Issara, as well as other industry and government best practices.

Thailand: Project Issara
In Thailand, Project Issara, an industry initiative, works with private-sector partners on an ongoing basis to assess and address risks in labor recruitment and management processes in the supply chain. Its multilingual migrant worker hotline and migrant community networks incorporate worker feedback into improvement plans. The project also includes resources for medical, psychological, legal, educational and economic support.

U.K: Stronger Together
Walmart is a member of Stronger Together, a multistakeholder initiative aiming to reduce human trafficking, forced labor and other hidden third-party exploitation of workers in supply chains in the U.K. Stronger Together provides downloadable resources for employers, labor providers, workers and worker representatives.

Factory energy efficiency

Just as Walmart is working to drive efficiency and sustainability across our own operations, we recognize that the significance of addressing these same issues across our global supply chain is far greater. In fact, 90 percent of our environmental impact exists beyond the footprint of our internal operations. That’s why we’re engaging directly with suppliers and investing in energy efficiency worldwide, creating more impact at a far greater rate than would have been possible on our own. Together, we’re:

  • Improving energy efficiency among our suppliers in China
  • Reducing GHG emissions across our supplier base
 

Aspiration

Suppliers and factories that represent 70 percent of our business sourced in China will participate in Walmart’s Factory Efficiency Program by 2017.

Since we announced this initiative in August 2014, more than 200 factories in China have signed on to the Resource Efficiency Deployment Engine (RedE), a Web-based tool that guides the identification of energy-efficiency improvement initiatives. We’re pleased with the positive momentum and we anticipate those numbers will grow significantly in the years ahead.

RedE

Through RedE, suppliers can:

  • Identify specific levers and impact estimates to help determine which projects to consider
  • Prioritize what levers to pursue, focusing on projects with less than a two-year payback
  • Track implementation of projects from identification to booked savings
  • Utilize a dashboard to manage performance, track impact and view peer performance
 

Aspiration

Eliminate 20 million metric tons (MMT) of GHG emissions from Walmart’s global supply chain by the end of 2015.

Through our partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, we’ve worked on projects that cumulatively reduced more than 17.4 million metric tons (MMT) of GHG emissions from our supply chain by the end of 2014. We’re on track to exceed our 2015 goal of eliminating 20MMT, compared with our 2010 baseline.

Collaborating with CDP to drive supplier greenhouse gas reduction

We’re actively engaged with Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) — an international organization working to transform the way the world does business to protect our natural resources — through its supply chain program. This relationship offers our suppliers a global platform for reporting climate strategies and data, which drives continued improvement toward the Sustainability Index and transparency into our supply chain.

  • In 2014, more than 700 suppliers submitted responses to our request. Of those, 68 percent reported more than 1,900 greenhouse gas emission-reduction activities.
  • As an example, one key supplier, Stanley Black & Decker — a Connecticut-based manufacturer of industrial tools and household hardware — reports that it has taken steps to reduce its energy consumption, waste generation and water consumption by 50 percent since 2009. The company recently earned the highest possible score on CDP’s Climate Performance Leadership Index.
 
Challenges: Sustainable manufacturing

As in several other areas where Walmart has made public commitments, there’s no existing road map to follow. By leveraging our size and scale, we work across industries to make a big impact in the supply chain. But when taking on big targets, there are specific challenges that exist, such as:

  • Limited internal expertise for identifying and prioritizing potential improvements
  • Diverse production processes that impede standardized scale-up
  • Lack of companywide systems for managing progress across a network
  • Limited on-site resources to invest in tools, training and monitoring

Walmart can’t do this alone. That’s why we’ve collaborated with CDP, McKinsey & Co., EDF and others to work through reducing supply chain inefficiencies together.